One example of an intelligent gear change program has been described in DE-OS 39 22 051 wherein by "intelligent" it is understood that the driver of a vehicle needs not actuate any selector button for setting a certain gear change range, i.e., sporting drive or economic drive, since an electronic control device infers on the basis of input variables the behavior of the driver and thus the type of driver. For example, here the signal of a throttle valve, the speed of an internal combustion engine and both the longitudinal and transverse acceleration, as determined from the wheel speeds, serve as input variables. According to the prior art, a driving activity or a driver type is determined from the input variables. Based on the driver type an adequate gear change characteristic line is then selected from a plurality of gear change characteristic lines. Thus, for a slow drivertype, for example, a gear change characteristic line with low gear change points is selected, and for a sporting driver type, a gear change characteristic line with high gear change points is selected.
Since the behavior of a driver in different driving situations can be different, an otherwise sporting driver, for example, who in curves prefers a slower drive, would find inappropriate in the above mentioned driving situation to have his driving behavior in general classified as sporting. The gear change program must therefore be able to flexibly react to different driving situations.
German patent 41 20 603 has disclosed a process relative to cornering in which an upshift is admissible only when the transverse acceleration is below a limit value.
This process known from the prior art thus has the disadvantage that when cornering with a high transverse acceleration even though a gear change is eliminated, the driving activity or the type of driver is not evaluated.